Gift of a Chromebook
The first family computer entered our house around 2000/2001. We were a techy family even in the 1990’s, having had desktops (with and without internet) for my dad’s business and work since the late 1980’s. But he was sick and tired of us “accidentally” moving icons around or deleting important files on the work computer.
The crunch point was when our computer games, 8 floppy disk sagas running over DOS, started interfering with the business computer’s boot up. My dad was without his computer nearly a week and had to drop a few hundred dollars for someone to fix it.
Once it was fixed, off we went to Future Shop and dropped about $900 on an AST with 2 MB of RAM and 32 MB harddrive. We could type e-mails, surf the internet, print out custom made cards with Canon Create-A-Card, and play a few more floppy disk video games.
As my older brother got to junior high and high school, video games started becoming more sophisticated and started consuming his life and his “monopolizing” of the “family” computer got too much for my mom. So my parents thought it was a good idea to buy him his own computer for his room.
This was not a good idea.
Sending him to his bedroom was certainly not a punishment, and taking away the CPU or monitor was a pain (I mean, they were HUGE back in the day). The only punishment my parents could manage was taking away his keyboard.
I guess they thought this was suitable and effective because they ended up buying my younger brother a computer for his room as well.
I got by on using the “family” computer for a while longer, but at some point, my mom wanted to “upgrade” the family computer to something a little speedier, flashier, newer, and shinier. So back to Future Shop we went and dropped another $1000 or so on the latest CPU model that had been carefully chosen based on the hours of studying the fliers.
But what to do with the old computer?
I inherited that one.
The Windows platform, software, and web browsers were so demanding on the system that the only functions I could carry out was MSN messenger, Word, and Paint. And only one at a time.
Over the following years, even into college, I followed the path that my younger brother paved in terms of hard and software. It started when I would buy his old computers and monitors, and then when he bought a high spec refurbished laptop, I did the same. The pinnacle of my younger brother’s computer sorcery was when he built my CPU from pieces he had ordered, specific to what I wanted to do at the time.
It was a lot of torrenting and media watching.
But all good things had to come to an end, and I had to leave that awesome little CPU in Canada when I decided to move to the UK. I ended up buying a really good HP laptop that was like a desktop in my lap. While it could do everything my desktop could, it was like carrying a lead weight around, so not very practical for travelling. But it was such a great laptop that I ran it to the ground.
Two years ago, after having voiced my frustrations and struggles to my parents about my dying laptop, they had decided that as an early Christmas gift they would buy me a brand new laptop. This decision was largely guided by my mom who was the original technophile in the household, and she knew that I needed something reliable and lightweight to pack with me on my travels. She also knew that I was never going to be able to afford it at the time given that my divorce still wasn’t finalized.
In consultation with my younger brother, naturally, the next time I flew home, I was greeted with a shiny, metal cased Acer Chromebook 14. Considering the criteria my previous laptops had, this is a much simpler, scaled down tool.
It’s funny how the longer I live the more simplicity I crave. It’s also a bit funny that no matter how old I got, my mom always knew what I needed and what was best for me (often to my chagrin). Out of all the people in my life, I know that no one is going to watch out for me like my mom did.
